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2014-08-26

Level Up - Paint.NET & Android: How to create new color palettes for Android Holo and Material design

If you work in Android and Paint.NET, here's some quick tips and resources to make both easier to work with. When designing graphics in Paint.NET, it would be really useful to have direct access to all of the Android design guide colors. So, here's how to save and load different color palettes in Paint.NET:

Step 1: In the Colors window in the lower left (click F8 if you don't see it), there are two clicks to open the color palettes folder as you can see in the below screenshot.

How to open color palettes folder in Paint.NET

Step 2: You should now have an empty folder open. Create a new text file in the folder called "material-design.txt" and fill it with all of the following information:

; Colors from http://www.google.com/design/spec/style/color.html#; paint.net Palette File; Lines that start with a semicolon are comments; Colors are written as 8-digit hexadecimal numbers: aarrggbb; For example, this would specify green: FF00FF00; The alpha ('aa') value specifies how transparent a color is. FF is fully opaque, 00 is fully transparent.; A palette must consist of ninety six (96) colors. If there are less than this, the remaining color; slots will be set to white (FFFFFFFF). If there are more, then the remaining colors will be ignored.FF000000FFE51C23FFE91E63FF9C07B0FF673AB7FF3F51B5FF5677FCFF03A9F4FF00BCD4FF009688FF259B24FF8BC34AFFCDDC39FFFFDB3BFFFFC107FFFF9800FFFFFFFFFFFF5722FF795548FF9E9E9EFF607D8B

After saving this file, restart Paint.NET and in the dropdown, you'll see the "material-design" color palette to choose. Once you choose it, you should see something like the following:

Google Material Design color palette in Paint.NET

To add the Android Holo color palette to Paint.NET, create another new text file ("android-holo.txt") in the palettes folder, and copy in the following lines:

; Colors from http://developer.android.com/design/style/color.html; paint.net Palette File; Lines that start with a semicolon are comments; Colors are written as 8-digit hexadecimal numbers: aarrggbb; For example, this would specify green: FF00FF00; The alpha ('aa') value specifies how transparent a color is. FF is fully opaque, 00 is fully transparent.; A palette must consist of ninety six (96) colors. If there are less than this, the remaining color; slots will be set to white (FFFFFFFF). If there are more, then the remaining colors will be ignored.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

This text file should provide you with a color palette that looks like the following:

Android Holo color palette in Paint.NET

Tip:
- If you want a quick example on how the color palette file should look, then you can save a current instance and just edit it manually in a text editor, which may sometimes be easier or quicker than changing the colors through the Colors window GUI.
- You can find more info on the documentation for Working With Palettes